newsCO.com.au –PC culture is tossing out classic American novels and other comments

Neither Mayor de Blasio nor officials at the MTA were given a heads-up on Manhattan DA Cy Vance’s decision to stop prosecuting subway fare-beaters. But City Journal’s Nicole Gelinas maintains they’re both “right to oppose the poorly thought out and poorly explained change of policy.” Because “deterring people from stealing from the MTA keeps mass transit safe.” Moreover, “Vance appears to be peddling a solution without a problem,” since “most fare beaters already avoid arrest,” getting civil violations instead. Yet even “the threat of prosecution serves as a credible deterrent to repeat offenders and even to would-be first offenders.” Plus, Vance’s “insinuation that some poor people can’t help but be chronic thieves is an insult to the far greater number of poor people who pay their fares.”

Iconoclast: Anti-Trumpism Has Gone Too Far

David Frum at The Atlantic laments the “social-media rage-spasm” surrounding Attorney General Jeff Sessions “for merely referencing the “incontrovertible and familiar fact” that there is such a thing as an “Anglo-American legal tradition.” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Ha.) even accused him of using an “appalling” and presumably racist “dog whistle.” But Frum sees in this an over-reaction by the anti-Trump “recoil”: Taking offense at mention of the Anglo-American legal heritage is “absurd” but relatively benign. Yet the worst may lie ahead: “Many Democrats are speaking as if immigration enforcement is inherently immoral, as if every Trump voter is a deplorable racist, as if the proper response to Trump’s ethnic chauvinism is an equal and opposite counter-chauvinism.”

From the right: Guess Who Came to Dinner?

Why, asks Commentary’s Sohrab Ahmari, are the news media ignoring a “major political scandal” involving “an anti-American government, a prominent member of Congress and a far-right group that traffics in anti-Semitism, homophobia and conspiracy theories”? Because the government is Iran, the pol is Democratic National Committee Deputy Chairman Keith Ellison and the group is Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam. Yet Ellison and Farrakhan attended a 2013 dinner hosted by Iranian President Hasan Rouhani — even though the congressman “has spent much of his political career running away from Farrakhan” and sending “earnest letters of apology to Jewish groups.” For all their tub-thumping over alleged Trump-Russia collusion, clearly some “progressive Democrats had no compunction about hobnobbing with representatives of an anti-American terror state.”

Conservative: Say Goodbye to Huck Finn and Atticus

The Duluth School District in Minnesota has yanked two American classics — “Huckleberry Finn’ and “To Kill a Mockingbird” — from its required reading list because they contain a certain racial slur. It’s a case, suggests National Review’s Kyle Smith, of “art that takes a stand against hatred” being “confused with hate speech.” And while the books will still be available in school libraries, the move is still “motivated by the censorious impulse, the desire to stamp out this or that disturbing expression.” Says Smith: “If you think Mark Twain and Harper Lee are degrading to black people because their characters use racist language, you’re doing literature wrong.” Moreover, “it is doing no favors for young people to quarantine them from books that consider other ages, other mores, other viewpoints — some of which were vile.”Professor: School Is About Signaling, Not Skill-Building

Parents and teachers warn students that to succeed in today’s “unforgiving job market,” they can’t “just coast through school,” notes Bryan Caplan in the LA Times. But students, who “rarely heed this advice,” may actually know better. “While the labor market rewards good grades and fancy degrees, most of the subjects schools require simply aren’t relevant on the job,” he notes. All that matters is the diploma, not an actual education, giving students “a chance to party in the present without hurting job prospects in the future.” Fact is, “most of education’s payoff comes from graduation, from crossing the academic finish line.” And “as long as [students] have good grades and finish their degrees, employers care little about what they’ve learned.”— Compiled by Eric Fettmann